Saturday, 22 October 2011

Freebody, freeloads on LNP and others

Ex-Cairns LNP candidate Paul Freebody says: Please leave me alone

CAIRNS' sacked LNP candidate Paul Freebody insists he released secret recordings of a meeting with party bosses to stop rumours he says were being spread by the party.

Mr Freebody said he still backed LNP leader Campbell Newman to win the state election in March, but said the LNP was being run behind closed doors "by old school guys who have free reign over the party".

In March, when he was the LNP candidate for Cairns, Mr Freebody was called to Brisbane for a two-hour grilling by party Treasurer Barry O’Sullivan over a soured business deal. Mr Freebody secretly taped the meeting after seeing another candidate came out of the interview room in tears.

On the tapes, which Mr Freebody made public this week, Mr O’Sullivan can be heard repeatedly swearing at Mr Freebody.

The Cairns businessman was told he was like "lifting a dead body" and was ordered to hold his hand in the air and repeat statements that Mr O’Sullivan feeds him. Mr Freebody, who runs a carwash in Cairns, was dropped as the LNP candidate in August over an unrelated email scandal.

But he said the party had not left him alone since he was axed and continued to spread rumours about him in LNP circles. "I wouldn’t have released those tapes had they kept that meeting confidential," Mr Freebody said.

"They’ve broken the confidentiality of that meeting by telling people, who have reported back to me, that (allegedly) I had two sets of books at the car wash. "And they couldn’t have repeated that unless they’d heard it from the people who were in that meeting." Mr Freebody said his ongoing troubles with the party were causing stress on his family and livelihood. "If they leave me alone, I’ll leave them alone," he said.

The party’s Queensland president Bruce McIver yesterday said the party had conducted more than 200 interviews with candidates and "some are more robust than others"Mr Newman, who was in Cairns yesterday, said the interview had "appeared to go a little too far". Former leader John-Paul Langbroek has denied any knowledge of the tone of the interview.

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MY VIEW

One of the first matters attended to by Campbell Newman when he became leader of the LNP was to purge itself of dud candidates, the likes of Paul Freebody in Cairns. Freebody was selected when the LNP was devoid of direction and purpose, as popular as Gavin King would be at a Women Electoral Lobby monthly meeting and therefore grabbed any reed in sight to cobble together a candidate for Cairns.

It is a credit to the LNP that following representations to the organisation by Cairns Blog and aggrieved individuals about his business dealings in particular, the Car Wash business in Reservoir Rd Manoora, his litany of broken promises about his Adventure Park development in the flood prone Barron River delta and other less than savoury instances including 'taped intimidating and threating telephone calls' to Cairns Blog's Mike Moore that the LNP moved to rid itself of what appeared to be a self serving candidate.

I had the opportunity to personally be briefed following approaches made to me by the previous owners of the Car Wash about the dubious purchasing process at the time when they acquired the business. I was shocked by the allegations levelled at Freebody by the traumatised and intimated owners and could not believe what I was hearing. For the record, I believe this matter notwitstanding restraining conditions is yet to be finalised and may indeed be referred to investigating authorities for any possible criminal breach.

To top off Freebody's erratic behavior was his alleged reference to Gillard and the assassination of John F. Kennedy and beseeching the same fate on Gillard and then when caught out Freebody as a loving family man and born again christian attempts to implicate his children on the miss deed, was obviously more than enough for Campbell Newman to digest.

Typical of Paul Freedody previous public utterances, this latest self defeating episode is confirming evidence thatthe LNP did the right thing when it rid itself of a dubious candidate.

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I have been involved in public life since the age of twenty three when I was first elected to the Mulgrave Shire Council.
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